Tag: Historical Method

2007-06-26

The problem of understanding anonymous texts (e.g. gospels)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, Religion and Atheism
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There’s an interesting passage in Steve Fuller’s Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science that strikes me as having a most cogent critique of those who assert that the most honest and true way to read the gospels is to simply take them at face value:

Even if ideas and arguments should be evaluated independently of their origins, we must still first learn about their origins, in order to ensure the evaluation is indeed independent of them. The only thing worse than accepting or rejecting an idea because we know about its originator is doing so because we know nothing of the originator. Ignorance may appear in two positive guises. Both are due to the surface clarity of relatively contemporary texts, which effectively discourages any probing of their sources: on the one hand, we may read our own assumptions into the textual interstices; on the other, we may unwittingly take on board the text’s assumptions. In short, either our minds colonise theirs or theirs ours. In both cases, the distinction between the positions of interpreter and interpreting is dissolved, and hence a necessary condition for critical distance is lost.

pp. 71-72 (italics, Fuller’s; bold, mine)

Substitute for “relatively contemporary texts” the canonical gospels and read a commentary about texts, in this case the gospels and Acts or the Epistles, that present a “surface clarity”. Such a “surface clarity” — especially in a case when we know nothing of the origin of those texts — presents a huge problem for any interpreter. This is contrary to many who would see ignorance of authorship and provenance as irrelevant and who believe that the plain meaning of the text compels belief in the truly fair-minded.

So what is Fuller’s point and what relevance can this have for our reading of the gospels? Continue reading “The problem of understanding anonymous texts (e.g. gospels)”

2007-05-02

thoughts on “proving” or “disproving” things biblical

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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While I like to be rational and value healthy scepticism I am not interested in “disproving” the Bible. The idea of having any sort of agenda to “prove” or “disprove” anything to do with things or persons biblical seems quite pointless to me. (Who was it who said when asked if he believed in the Bible, “Sure do! Why I have even seen one with my own eyes in my parent’s home!” That’s about as far as I want to go with “proving the Bible” too.)

One reason is because the very notion of “proof” contains Continue reading “thoughts on “proving” or “disproving” things biblical”

2007-04-22

Comparing the sources for Alexander and Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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We have 5 literary sources for the life of Alexander the Great (late 4th century bce):

  1. Diodorus Siculus (1st century bce): 17th book of Universal History
  2. Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century ce): History of Alexander
  3. Plutarch (2nd century ce): Life of Alexander
  4. Flavius Arrianus Xenophon (Arrian) (2nd century ce): Campaigns of Alexander
  5. M. Junianus Justinus (Justin) (3rd century ce): epitomized the work of Pompeius Trogus (Augustan age)

Is it fair to accept these as evidence for an historical Alexander while not accepting the canonical gospels as sources for an historical Jesus? I think so for three reasons: Continue reading “Comparing the sources for Alexander and Jesus”

2007-03-17

Subjecting Papias to external controls. A first step

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Church Fathers, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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This relates to my previous post on Bauckham’s chapter 16. I addressed the issue of “naive readings” of texts, explaining what I mean by that term. I won’t repeat the details here. (Any text can claim to be written by so and so and at a certain time. Scholars know that when it comes to the bulk of apocryphal “new testament” writings.)

So what external evidence do we have for the time when the Papias text was written? Continue reading “Subjecting Papias to external controls. A first step”

2006-12-16

what’s wrong with this argument?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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I did succumb to the temptation to reply to a thread of a debate over whether or not a “historical jesus” existed. Below is what I wrote. Maybe in the next day or two when I return to this I will see glaring logical and factual flaws. But till I do, i do invite any passers-by who may happen to be reading this to put in their 2 cents/hundred-dollars’s worth…… (the bit at the top in the square brackets and related to ‘peter kirby’ are the immediate comment i was responding to in iidb)…..

[QUOTE=Peter Kirby;4010439]I am a naturalist, not a metaphysician. I approach this within such framework. If there was a Santa, or a Jesus, it is not the god which you are exercised to declaim.

In any case, the original question concerned what Paul believed, which is certainly a question for historical inquiry. Instead of advancing that question, what you and gurugeorge have posted serves only to obfuscate with this `burden of proof’ dime store philosophy.
[/QUOTE]

“Silly substitution method” and “dime store philosophy” are denigrations of Kimpatsu’s argument that appear to arise from a misunderstanding of it. If you are a naturalist you do not believe in a god or gods or god-men or sons of god any more than you believe in the tooth fairy.

Some historical figures did attach to themselves mythical labels like “gods” etc but we do not start with those mythical labels to establish their historicity. Nor do we start with one or two references whose authenticity is hotly disputed to establish their historicity.

The only reason we treat a son of a god or god-man figure differently from our historical foundations for other known figures is the power that that god-man figure has in our culture. That it takes books like Wells’ and Doherty’s to begin to alert us to the difference between statements of logic (‘tooth fairies don’t exist’ vs ‘tooth fairies do exist’: “these are equally plausible logical statements that require competing arguments for us to decide”) from statement of knowledge (the sun will rise tomorrow, tooth fairies do not exist, god-men or men possessed by gods or sons of god do not exist) is a bizarre indictment on the power of that myth in our 20-21st century culture.

It ought to be a no-brainer to even ask the question “did a historical Jesus exist”. We simply have nothing to begin any quest with. All we have a theological writings about a theological or metaphysical (not historical) person.

Even if there was a historical Jesus for whom we no longer have any evidence (does anyone still believe one can establish a “historical” jesus out of the theological and metaphysical constructs of which our evidence consists?) that question has simply become irrelevant and pointless.

The much more interesting question, one for which we do have evidence with which to work, is the origins of Christianity question. The cause of naturalism and science will be better served by secular historians not leaving it to “religionists” to explore the question of the origins of Christianity.

Valid historical method does not waste its energies trying to find something for which we have no evidence and that defies all basic precepts of naturalism.

The “did jesus exist” question is a distracting waste of time from the real question about the origins of Christianity. The only purpose the ‘did jesus exist’ question serves is, as alluded to above, to prise our culturally bound thought processes back into logical sanity and common sense knowledge in relation to ALL metaphysical constructs, even those bound up in our seemingly otherwise inescapable cultural heritage.

Neil

2006-12-15

Historical core again

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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Thinking through more what is meant by those who say that a search for some “historical core” is a viable one. It’s surely not. It would mean:

1. assuming that literature about the character in question and within a certain time frame of the time of that character is a priori grounds for assuming such a person existed; and

2. assuming that the type of character that existed is established by removing from that literature whatever is said about him that is implausible or impossible; and

3. assuming that if there is no other evidence that disproves that the character left over from steps 1 and 2 existed, then we can take that character as “the historical core”?

Hoo boy, if that’s a fair summary then one can “prove” that there is a “historical core” to the Little Red Riding Hood story. When will we learn to go beyond naive readings of texts and learn to understand basic principles of cultural studies, textual and literary criticism and historical — not to mention scientific — method.

N

2006-12-14

The search for an “historical core” in Christian origins??

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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I have held off posting on IIDB’s thread on the search for an historical core to Christian/Jesus origins until just now when I asked how one might define “historical core” and how one might know when one has found it. The whole question seems to me to be making assumptions about the methods of historical investigation that cannot be justified. But I need time to collect my thoughts on it more thoroughly before posting on it, if I ever do. The term seems to suggest that the way historians interpret and evaluate evidence can establish something that really is beyond that evidence and the constructs of the historians.

I fail to understand how starting at a later point and working back is any more likely to arrive at such a historical core — If the root reasons for not establishing some common understanding of Christian origins has more to do with unscientific approaches to historical method in so much of what passes for biblical scholarship and the paucity of evidence, then aren’t we just going to end up reaching the same impasse only from the opposite direction?

(But I don’t want to go the way of being absurdly post-modernistic on this or sounding that way. Some constructs can be more than just theoretical. A person shot another person may be a construct but it’s also a reality beyond the construct. )

New Testament Gospels’ “Mythic Past”?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Is there any such beast as a scholarly discussion of the ‘New Testament’ gospels and epistles as possible direct continuations of the ‘Old Testament’s’ intellectual world?

I’m thinking of Thomas L. Thompson’s ‘Mythic Past‘: “Both theologically and referentially, most of the texts that were to become the Christian Bible’s Old Testament belong to an intellectual world that holds the New Testament in common….. Most of the works that belong to these ‘testaments’ reflect a single biblical tradition that has its roots in what is widely understood as early Jewish intellectual history. They relate to each other as older and younger contemporaries within a common discourse. The discussions about tradition that we find in the New Testament are not reinterpretations of a closed past. They are part of an ongoing transmission common to the whole of biblical tradition.” (p.289)

If the literature of ‘the old testament’ is essentially a metaphor (mythic creation?) of ‘a new and true remnant ‘Israel’ replacing an old and failed and vanished ‘Israel’ as part of an identification ‘program’ for an uprooted people settled beside ‘strangers’ who are sometimes godfearing and often antagonistic, then is it unreasonable to explore the possibility that the gospels are essentially an extension of this identification ‘program’ for a post 70 ce generation? And if valid, does such a perspective change or add to any ‘mythic’ portrayal of Jesus as hitherto understood?

Neil

2006-12-13

Methodology: Comparing New Testament & Old Testament origins

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Archaeology, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament, Old Testament
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How justifiable is it to compare the arguments of the “Copenhagen School” that suggests the evidence favours, say, David being a theological and literary creation with certain arguments of the “Jesus mythicists”?

I’m thinking of Thompson’s “It is a fundamental error of method to ask first after an historical David or Solomon, as biblical archaeologists and historians have done. We need first to attend to the David and Solomon we know: the protagonists of Bible story and legend. The Bible does not hesitate to tell these stories as tall tales.” (The Mythic Past, p.45)

Compare Davies’ “So far, historical research by biblical scholars has taken a … circular route …. The assumption that the literary construct is an historical one is made to confirm itself. Historical criticism (so-called) of the inferred sources and traditions seeks to locate these in that literary-cum-historical construct.” (In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’, pp.35-37)

If we accept the nature of the old testament biblical literature as suggested by Thompson, Davies, Lemche et al (i.e. that it was composed largely as a literary founding myth which bears little if any relationship to real history — check out my above link to In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ for links to details), is it not a small step to seeing the first gospel as equally creative in its foundation myths for the ‘new and true people of God’? Are not the studies of the Gospel of Mark that offer the greater explanatory power for its various parts and characters those that analyze its literary context and nature (e.g. Tolbert’s Sowing the Gospel) in ways that leave much of the older discussions about traditions underlying various bits and pieces somewhat irrelevant?

Should not the real question ask for the origins and context of such a literary work, leaving it open as to whether the most satisfactory answer is to be found with a heroic founder or with something more complex, as some argue was the case with the literature about David?

One initial objection might be that the multiplicity of varying gospels argues against such a possibility but again we may well be reading the same phenomonon of rival scribal schools in dialog with one another as we appear to find among the OT prophetic and historical writings.

Neil

(I originally asked this question back in 2000 in JesusMysteries — my thoughts have only strengthened in this direction since.)

2006-12-05

Is Earlier Truer?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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Last night I began reading Majella Franzmann’s ‘Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings‘ (1996) wondering all the while what value such sources could have for the study of “Jesus” as anything but a theo-philosophical construct. But Franzmann challenged the assumption underpinning this question deploring the way the vast bulk of “historical Jesus” scholars have allowed those gospels that eventually won out politically over their many rival texts to be regarded as the only sources of historical value. (The only exception being a few occasional sideways glances at the Gospel of Thomas.)

Getting tired I put the book down at that point and starting thinking, and woke up this morning still thinking:

Do secular historians as a rule treat the earliest available evidence of a person or event as more reliable than later testimonies? Where am I more likely to find a more accurate portrayal of the emperor Augustus? By comparing his propagandist poet Virgil with his own propaganda inscriptions or by comparing and analyzing texts written by both historians and literary artists after his time? Ditto with Chairman Mao: by comparing the stories told through art, literature, political and news reports about him in his lifetime or by looking at the art, literature, political and news reports that have appeared long after his death?

Okay, those may not be fair comparisons with the gospel evidence. We assume there was no-one threatening to kill dissidents in the earliest days of Christianity. But the point has been made that it is not a blanket truism that the earliest surviving evidence is more likely to be the more historically or biographically accurate simply by virtue of its ‘earlier-ness’. This is crazy. Why have I gone along with this false UNhistorical assumption of just about every “biblical scholar” I have read about the “historical Jesus” till now.

So what about situations where there is no threat against those who tell the truth? Australian newspapers and much general public talk contemporary with the Suharto massacres in Indonesia noted the bare bones outlines of “facts” about what was happening at the time. The general public had to wait for the novel and film, The Year of Living Dangerously, fictional works, to get a much more factual, truer and detailed account (even through fiction) of what really happened at that time. No one at the time was threatening Australian media from speaking out more strongly about what was really happening.

What of biographies? Who has presented a more real portrait of the private John Lennon? Yoko Ono in the earliest days and since or his ex-wife Cynthia nearly 40 years later?

How often is it that we find the closest followers of cult leaders are the last to learn, if they ever do, the “real history” of their cult leaders? And how often is it that even the wider public is unaware of their real lives until time has corroded the outer veneer?

Why on earth have I not before now stopped to think through and confront this unhistorical assumption that the earlier evidence by virtue of its “earlier-ness” is somehow going to be “more historical”? “Early” certainly tells us much about the person or events, but “what” it actually tells us may be the very opposite from the “true” person or events.

I look forward to reading and thinking through the remainder of Majella Franzmann’s book.

Neil